Sometimes We Just Stay Home and Drink: #22: Hop Farm F41 Cream Ale, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Date:  June 21 , 2019  —

The Story—  This certainly isn’t a stay at home beer.  We tasted it at the brewery in Pittsburgh in the upper west section that allows a three or four brewery crawl with a short Uber ride or two and some walking.

The Hop Farm Brewery isn’t a farm at all, but a welcoming beer bar with above average beers and a friendly atmosphere.  Locals we talked to loved it – and with good reason.  One of the good ones was a cream ale that was worth having more than one.  The 4.8% abv was certainly within specs but there was just enough hop balance to take it out or the cream ale gutter and make it a very pleasant beer.

The Beer– It starts with a chewy pale malt.  Tangy and slightly metallic on the finish with enough back bitter to cleanse.  Ellie liked its crisp finish

Value — Good. Maybe better than good, but we only tried a sampler size since we were on a multi brewery role.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Sometimes we just stay home and drink beer — hundreds of them over the course of the year as we hunt for a new favorite.  The searching for the beer of the day never stops, so for a while, there will be fewer travel-oriented posts and just some to-the-point descriptions of beers we’ve enjoyed.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Sometimes We Just Stay Home and Drink: #21: Moustache Lawn Beer Cream Ale, Riverhead, Long Island, New York.

Date:  June 20 , 2019  —

The Story— This is another prize from our semi-annual beer gathering excursion from Boston to Baltimore.  We’re pretty sure we picked this up at Half Time Beverage in Poughkeepsie, NY. and we’re grateful for Half Time and a handful of other really good beer stores– for allowing us to try all sorts of breweries we’d never encounter any other way.     Moustache (sic), for example,  is located near the eastern end of Long Island; its taproom is open Thursday through Sunday but it’s well out of the way for us and we’re not likely to visit soon.

The Moustache can recalls the Utica Club Cream Ale brand of the late 1960s so evocatively that we’re pretty sure it has to be an homage to one of the great cream ales of its day.  While it’s hard to recall very precisely what attracted us to the Utica Club above all others (and especially Genesee), we’re pretty sure it was a mild fruity hop and very clean and mild malt.  Not much by today’s standards.   This one brings back the memories but with enough balance to hold its own in the current craft beer explosion.  Hats off to the Moustache guys for a fine beer in a nearly impossible style to do well.

The Beer– Hops show in the aroma and some in the flavor but only enough metallic biter to balance the tangy pale malt.   Nicely reminiscent of upstate New York in the 60s.  Also, props for not calling it a kolsch, which hundreds of breweries do with a hard to define gold ale.   It’s a lawn beer indeed, and I could sit in a lawn chair and drink this all day long.

Value — Good to very good.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Sometimes we just stay home and drink beer — hundreds of them over the course of the year as we hunt for a new favorite.  The searching for the beer of the day never stops, so for a while, there will be fewer travel-oriented posts and just some to-the-point descriptions of beers we’ve enjoyed.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Sometimes We Just Stay Home and Drink #20: Centokiodi Sveltina Cream Ale, Centokiodi, Bologna, Italy

Date:  June 19 , 2019  —

The Story—  This isn’t the top rated cream ale, but it is one of the relatively few cream ales that scored above average for a craft beer.   It’s well into the top 15% of the more than 100 cream ales we’ve tasted.   Perhaps even more remarkable than the fact that it proves a good cream ale is possible, is the fact that it’s a relatively obscure Italian brewery that’s doing the proving.

The brewery, as far as we know, only brews four brands of beer.  We believe they do not have a tap room, but we know they have a sense of humor.   The legend under the Sveltina translates to “leaves a bitter taste in your mouth just like a quickie.”   (We’re sure they’re referring to a short and quick tasting sampler.   We’ll, they might be.)  Even better is the legend under their Eroica:   “Anyone can grab a tiger by the balls, but only a hero continues to tighten his grip.”

We tasted this beer–and several other hard-to-find Italian beers– at the Rahzani restaurant and bar in Bologna.  It’s known for the pizza, and deservedly so, but the ever-changing beer lineup makes the slightly challenging (but quite safe) hunt through an industrial neighborhood worth the effort. You can take a taxi, but don’t expect him to find it easily either.

The Beer– Would that all cream ales had this much flavor, but despite their advertising slogan there’s little of a hop slam bitterness to it. Lots of malt with a tangy orange peel finish.  Chalky yeast but still orangey into the aftertaste.

Value —  good to very good.   Craft breweries in Italy are taxed at higher rates than the big guys.  (And you thought lobbyists were out of control in the US.)  About eight bucks for a half liter isn’t much more than you’d pay in most craft bars in America.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Sometimes we just stay home and drink beer — hundreds of them over the course of the year as we hunt for a new favorite.  The searching for the beer of the day never stops, so for a while, there will be fewer travel-oriented posts and just some to-the-point descriptions of beers we’ve enjoyed.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Sometimes We Just Stay Home and Drink #19:  Black Cap Cream Ale, Red Lion, Pa.

Date:  June 18 , 2019  —

The Story—  Yesterday in telling the story of a gold ale masquerading as a cream ale we mentioned that the more than 100 cream ales we’ve tasted, as a group, probably rate lower than any other style we’ve sampled. (We thought that maybe Gose would score lower, but, although the average Gose score has dropped sharply in the last couple of years, the average of the 62 we’ve tried is significantly higher than that of cream ale.  Breweries use cream ales as “entry” beers for people who want Budweiser thinking that will put them on a path to appreciation of craft beer. We think giving people a dull flavorless often cloudy yellowness to try to shift them away from a dull flavorless clear yellowness is a very poor idea.   Lots of breweries do this with alleged kolsch (sic) beers with similarly poor results.*

We also noted, however, that a handful of cream ales broke out of the pack– usually by breaking the guidelines for the style.   These beers, like yesterday’s gold ale, are easy to drink but with a far better hop balance than the average.

We’ll start a short series of very good cream ale with one you can’t have.   The brewer is closed, the kettles and tanks have been sold and the brewer isn’t brewing anymore, but it’s worth remembering as an example of that the style can be.   Black Cap’s Cream Ale is our top rated cream ale of all time.

We categorize breweries as “destination” “highly professional” “professional” and “enthusiast”.   The latter category is intended as descriptive not judgmental, but a brewery with a well educated or highly experienced head brewer is simply less likely to get surprises from his serving tanks than a home brewer trying to upscale his award winning recipes.  Black Cap was an enthusiast brewery, but with mostly really happy surprises. We loved the place, we loved the people, and we loved the beer.   We still mourn its passing.

The Beer–  Balanced if slightly husky true cream ale.  The noble hops show as grassy, but balance very well. Like most of the above average cream ales in our data base, it shows more hops than the milk-toast entry beers that appropriate the style name.

Value —  Very good (and very irrelevant.)   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

*We recognize that if a group of six drinkers has five craft fans and one bud-lover, it’s got to offer something that the budlover can stand in order to get the other five to visit its taproom.   But really, isn’t it just enough to offer the blueberry banana milkshake heller bock?  A handful of breweries–at least where it’s legal– throw in the brewing towel and put Miller Lite on tap.  Snce Miller can make a better flavorless beer than they can, they’re smart to do so.

Sometimes we just stay home and drink beer — hundreds of them over the course of the year as we hunt for a new favorite.  The searching for the beer of the day never stops, so for a while, there will be fewer travel-oriented posts and just some to-the-point descriptions of beers we’ve enjoyed.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

Sometimes We Just Drink: #18:  Beltway Brewing HOV, aka Class of ’69 Cream Ale.  Sterling, Virginia

Date:  June 17 , 2019  —

The Story—  To make a long story short….nah, why would I do that?  But to clarify one point right away– I know this beer is not a cream ale.  Sort of.

A couple of years ago I promised my Hamilton College reunion committee that I’d have a beer for the 50th Reunion, assuming Tuppers’ would be back in business by then.   Ironically we brewed for the first time in almost 5 years one week before the reunion –not nearly early enough to produce a beer for the event.   We knew Beltway Brewing did small runs of custom cans, however.  For a minimum of 10 cases, they’ll help you design the can label and put pretty much anything “within reason” on it you want.   I had intended to brew an extra hoppy cream ale — at least in part because the one-dollar pitchers of cream ale from Genesee and Utica Club were two of our  favorite beers in the college’s pub.

A cream ale is light colored, lightly hopped, supposedly easy drinking beer.   We’ve tasted over a hundred of them and the greatest shared characteristic is:  they’re pretty awful.   It would take too long for too little gain to actually run the numbers, but I believe there is no other style — except now maybe Gose– whose average score is lower than cream ale.  There are exceptions, but they tend to bend, or in some cases shatter, the general guidelines.   (We’ll talk about the exceptions over the next few days in this space.)

Our original intention was to capture some of the drinkability we loved in the 1960s with a hop flavor attuned to the 21st century.   As it turned out we didn’t have to brew it– we just had to find it, rename it, design a label for it and haul it up to Hamilton College for a heck of a good midnight party on the back patio of a former fraternity house.  It’s almost as light colored as a cream ale and it’s as easy to drink as a cream ale.  It’s hoppier than all but a handful of the cream ales we’ve tasted; coincidentally, those hoppy cream ales were the only ones that reached “average” or “above average” in our tastings.

Beltway got its start brewing for other maxed-out breweries when craft beer soared after the turn of the century.  Today, far fewer breweries are maxed out — some have added tanks, others’ sales have tanked– and Beltway is promoting more of its original products.  The HOV Gold Ale is one of their regular products.

We rate gold ales a bit higher than cream ales in general, but I’m not a big fan of them either.  UK brewers cask up low alcohol gold ales by the hundreds, but they taste like a flower shop by the end of the second pint.   Beltway’s HOV, though, is a beautifully balanced gold ale, dangerously easy to drink– all night.  We both liked it when we tasted it several months ago.  When we had a chance to spend a night with it, we loved it even more.   The balanced taste stays clean beer after beer (at least that’s what my classmates told me–uh huh), but what impressed me more is that the usual regrets after a post-midnight indulgence just weren’t there.   For me, at least, this is as clean and gentle a beer as the masterpiece Helles lagers of Munich.

The Beer–  Pale malt includes a touch of soft sweet bread, but enough hops keep it from cloying.   A bit of fruit and a hint of metal follow.   Not much drama, but nicely quaffable.  Ellie’s notes mention a late interesting metal bitter along with the bread, and some sweet fruit before a bit of bitter (yeast?) and some slight hop oil set the stage for another healthy sip.

Value — Very good.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Sometimes we just stay home and drink beer — hundreds of them over the course of the year as we hunt for a new favorite.  The searching for the beer of the day never stops, so for a while, there will be fewer travel-oriented posts and just some to-the-point descriptions of beers we’ve enjoyed.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”